The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Wakenight Emporium, by A. B. Westreviewed by Martin Riker
A. B. West. Wakenight Emporium. FC2, 2002. 128 pp. Paper: $10.95.
Like David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress, this book is charming first for its syntax, drawing its effect more from the narrator’s voice, her mental stutters and turns of phrase, than from the various items she discusses. Not that these items lack charm. In thirty-one vignettes—which the narrator calls “quarrels”—that voice (and so the book) describes a universe of humans, Martians, and extraordinary animals, governed by physical laws slightly more elaborate than the ones most of us are familiar with. In place of plot, the details of this universe come to us through a progression of thoughts and second-thoughts: “I can’t recall what I was going to say about the future. . . .” she tells us halfway through a chapter called “The Thing about the Future”; then, a few lines later: “Oh yes. This was it: a fragment of prose.” In this meandering way we learn about “quick time,” the penises of flying ants, how birds see the world, the curious patterning of the palindrome moth, and the direction of the future, which is “up.” The narrator’s voice is in turns scientific and maternal, not just storylike but storybooklike, which means that at times her quips can feel cute or corny (depending, I guess, on the predisposition of the reader); however, she doesn’t seem overly concerned with how her words are taken, which is another aspect of her charm. Instead, she works through her series of meditations as if with a greater purpose in mind, ostensibly seeking a kind of truth, even if, as she says, “the very suggestion that the promotion of a few truths could avert our now-unavoidable annihilation crowns wishfulthinking with . . . is mere wishful thinking” (sic). Failure to avert annihilation notwithstanding, West’s book is a beautiful attempt to move the reader outside of mundane human experience—hence the focus on external perspectives: physics, Martians, birds, and insects with their own “raspy little affairs”—in order to arrive at a broader sense of humanity and the big scheme of things.